


let go of guarantees

by nikomedes



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Canon Universe, Multi, Polyshipping, archiving from tumblr, from prompts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-08
Updated: 2017-05-26
Packaged: 2020-12-21 15:43:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 5,626
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21077372
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nikomedes/pseuds/nikomedes
Summary: “I’m beginning to think holding down nine-to-five jobs ain’t exactly conducive to having wild threesomes,” Bucky joked, shooting a glance at Peggy as she stepped into her shoes.“Unfortunately," she replied, "as Steve would be happy to tell us if he had enough strength in his pelvis at the moment to sit up and argue, capitalism demands we exchange our labor for money to survive.”(various prompted polyship fics archived from tumblr)





	1. getting started

**Author's Note:**

> these stories all come from my former fanfic blog, gaymarveltrash, so if you've read these before thanks, and if you're reading them for the first time, note that they're short form and bit disjointed because of the nature of being written for anonymous ask prompts.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> modern AU, ‘we’re two thirds of the threesome we had last night and we’re walking awkwardly out of the last persons’s apartment together’

Peggy pulled the door to behind them with a quiet click, heels in hand, as Bucky stepped out. Weak sunlight filtered in from the small frosted mirror at the end of the hall, just enough to paint the hallway in gray light. Bucky looked down and tried in vain to tug the wrinkles out of his button-down shirt. Peggy was still wearing the ghost of last night’s lipstick over half her face.  
  
“I’m beginning to think holding down nine-to-five jobs ain’t exactly conducive to having wild threesomes,” Bucky joked, shooting a glance at Peggy as she stepped into her shoes.

“Unfortunately, as Steve would be happy to tell us if he had enough strength in his pelvis at the moment to sit up and argue, capitalism demands we exchange our labor for money to survive,” she said, a laugh in her voice under her crisp British accent. She flicked her eyes back to Steve’s apartment door, paint-flecked around the door knob from comings and goings without time to scrub his hands off. “Not all of us can out-stubborn the cost of living.”  
  
“Rent control and a lot of righteous fury in a small body’ll do that,” Bucky agreed. He cleared his throat and gestured down the hall. “I don’t think we, uh. Well, I don’t think we were really introduced last night. What do you do for a living?”

Peggy gave him a thin smile. “I’m afraid that’s classified, Mr. Barnes. Yourself?”

“This and that,” he said with a shrug. “Busing tables right now.”  
  
“Funny. With the way you hold yourself I would’ve wagered on career military.”

“You’re half-right,” he said. “Just the ‘career’ part ain’t working out for me much in anything these days.”

Peggy hummed as they began down the five flights of stairs to the lobby. She studied him out of the corner of her eye.

“Strange people Steve attracts,” she said.”Though I have to say that out of the many characters that breeze through his shows you’re one of the least objectionable.”  
  
“Well, hell,” Bucky said with a laugh, “I’ll always take the glowing review of least objectionable.”

Peggy smiled, but when she spoke it was very business-like. “What I mean to say is this: I have an incredibly draining job, Mr. Barnes. What happened last night felt like three years worth of stress relief. You’re pleasant enough to be around and the things you can do with your tongue are a credit to this nation. If you’re not opposed I would like to do this again _without _the near-lethal social lubricant of… what was that?”

“Vodquila,” Bucky supplied.

“Vodquila, yes,” she confirmed. “As I was saying. I don’t think Steve would object. It’s obvious we both care for him, and he cares for us.”

Bucky coughed and scratched the back of his neck. “I thought you two were…?”

“Contrary to the popular saying,” Peggy said, with a warm look, “three isn’t necessarily a crowd.”

Bucky shoved his hands in his pockets and sucked his teeth in thought as they descended the last flight.

“You really wouldn’t mind?” he asked.

“I don’t say things just to take them back, Mr. Barnes,” Peggy said. Bucky laughed.

“I see why he likes you.”

They paused in the lobby for a moment. Peggy caught sight of herself in a long horizontal mirror on the wall and reached up towards the smears of red on her face. Bucky tapped her on the shoulder and offered her a crumpled tissue. She nodded her thanks and flicked a dark red fingernail at his rumpled shirt as she tried to make herself a touch more presentable.

“Hang that up in the bathroom when you shower,” she said. “The steam will help most of the wrinkles to fall out.”

“Huh. Thanks,” Bucky said. He scuffed his foot against the worn carpeting. “So. This proposal of yours seems pretty serious. I’m thinking, we should probably get to know each other a little better before we bring it up to him. You know Steve, he’d probably just get all excited and say yes right off the bat…”  
  
“He does love to rush into things that seemed like a good idea at the time,” Peggy agreed. “Dinner, then?”

“That’s what I was thinking.”

“Lovely. Name the place and I’ll be there. Do you have my phone number?”

They ended up exchanging them there in the lobby, with people coming home either really early or very late stepping around them, giving Bucky’s bruised neck and Peggy’s wild hair curious looks.  
  
“Save me under ‘Bucky,’” he said as he pocketed his phone. “All my friends do.”  
  
Peggy saved the contact with a light tap and then checked the time. She gave a gentle hiss.

“I must be off. Text about dinner.”  
  
Bucky gave her a little wave as she stepped away. “Will do. And, uh, I know we don’t want to bring anything up right away, but should we at least text Steve and let him know we’re gonna hang?”  
  
“Oh, absolutely not,” Peggy said, and tipped him a wink. “He’ll want to join us, and we must allow the poor darling _some _time to recover.”


	2. the deep questions

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> modern AU, SteveBuckyPeggy + Who in your OTP asks the weird questions in the middle of the night and who hits the other in the face with a pillow (and who sleeps through all of it)

“Honestly, though, I’m just askin’– And scientists are askin’, which, that’s a big deal–”

“Bucky,” Peggy groaned, pressing her face into Steve’s fine hair, “must you?”

“What if it_ is_ all a computer simulation?” Bucky asked, staring at the ceiling wide-eyed. “What if we’re in some fucker’s Sims game? We just get deleted one day. Gone. Poof! Who’ll know?”

Peggy sighed against Steve’s neck and gave him a shake. “Steve. Darling. Hand me your pillow.”

“…mmn your own…” Steve grumbled as he wound himself tighter in the blankets. Peggy groaned again as the duvet slipped away, leaving her exposed to the air in only a stretched out old shirt of Steve’s and Bucky’s cadged boxers. 

“Why do I do this?” she asked, grabbing the end of the covers and beginning her struggle with Steve, who was always much stronger than usual when his blanket nest was at risk. “I have a _lovely_ bed at home. Queen-sized, high thread-count sheets, pillow-top mattress, no, _oof_, no freezing to death in the night, or insomniacs–Steven, _really?_–full of _science_ trivia, or waking up on tubes of _paint.__”_

“Exactly,” Bucky said, voice starting to slur, but eyes still worryingly open and jaw clenched. “What’s the point of _anything_?”

“Paint thing was only once,” Steve mumbled. He still seemed asleep. She could’ve laughed at his knee-jerk defense if she wasn’t so completely exhausted. Peggy sat up in bed and looked at the digital alarm clock on Bucky’s side of the bed. It read 3:47 AM. Then she looked over her boys. 

“I was once on a mission and offered the company of a highly skilled French prostitute in exchange for my cooperation with the enemy,” she murmured to herself. “I could be eating caviar on toast points in Nice with her, but instead. _This_.”

That took Bucky’s eyes off the ceiling. “What?”

“Nothing,” she said. She got up and came around the bed to his side and pushed him to scoot over. He obliged, still giving her a confused look, and as she climbed in she gave his side of the hoarded duvet a hard pull. Steve came unraveled and went flush up against Bucky’s left side. Peggy molded to his right and pulled the covers over herself again. Steve snuffled a little but accepted the new arrangement without waking. 

“That was smooth as hell,” Bucky observed, voice starting to grate with over-use. He’d been asking questions of the ceiling for close to three hours. Peggy propped herself up on an arm and looked down at him. She ran the thumb of her free hand over the dark circles under his eyes. 

“Here are your options,” she said, softly. “You can get up and get some coffee, if you don’t feel you’ll sleep tonight. Or you can try, and, for once, let us be there for you if you wake up from something you’d rather forget.”

Bucky looked up at her in misery, lips pressed together, brows drawn down over his tired eyes. She waited. He sagged into the bed, turning his face into her shoulder with a grimace.

“I don’t like to wake him,” he mumbled into her skin. “He used to sleep so bad.”

“But you don’t want to leave, either,” Peggy surmised. Bucky nodded. She carded her hands through the sweat-damp hair at the base of his skull. “Then don’t.”

Bucky let out a shuddering breath. “You don’t mind?”

“I mind being woken up much less than I mind being kept awake for hours as you debate whether reality as we know it exists,” she murmured, the hint of a laugh in her voice. She pulled back slightly so she could look at him again. “I do need _some_ sleep, you know. I’m not invincible.”

Steve made some noise in his sleep that sounded like disagreement. They froze for a second, thinking they had woken him, and then had to smother laughter into skin and pillows.

“Time for sleep, Mr. Barnes,” Peggy teased, settling back down. “I assure you no nightmare will drive us away.”

She continued in a gentler tone, “And, I assure you, I am more than equipped to handle you should you do more than thrash about.”

The last of the tension bled out of Bucky’s neck and jaw.

“Thank you,” he whispered, relief in every syllable. Then he grinned with a little of his usual charm and added, “_Agent _Carter.”

Peggy pinched his bicep and pulled him closer into her body. Bucky looped an arm around her waist, and Steve already had an arm around his, and Peggy did her damndest to stretch and cover both of them, skin-to-skin in the narrow bed.


	3. a hostage situation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> modern AU, SteveBuckyPeggy “tried to get the candy bar that didn’t drop out of the vending machine and now my hand is stuck can u help me out” au

“You know, when you didn’t come back, I figured you’d just broken into the indoor pool and gone for a dip,” Steve said, pushing his hearing aids into place as he walked up. “This is much better.”

James Buchanan Barnes, lying on the pavement in front of the vending machine at Three Tides Motor Inn outside of an unnamed beach town on the California coast, looked up at him in grim resignation.

“All I wanted was a Milky Way,” he said. “Now I’m gonna die here.”

“This’s God punishing you for bad taste, then,” Steve said as he squatted next to him. “Did you pay for it first or did you go right for trying to grab it?”

“I paid,” Bucky insisted. “I paid, and the damn thing didn’t fall, and it’s so close to the slot, see?”

Steve looked up. Milky Ways _were_ on the second row from the bottom. The first slot in the coil was empty, though.

“So you did get it to drop?” he asked.

“It’s in my hand, Steve,” Bucky said. “It’s in my hand, but my damn hand won’t come out.”

“Well, first of all,” Steve said, pulling out his smartphone, “I’m Snapchatting Peggy.”

“Oh, yeah, of course,” Bucky said. “I would pose for you, but. Y’know.”

“This ain’t figure drawing, Buck,” Steve said. He got back up and walked around Bucky for a bit, looking for the perfect angle. There was a click as he took the picture, and he grinned as he tapped out some message over it. Then he locked his phone and got back down on Bucky’s level to assess the problem.

“I really can’t see how you did this,” Steve said, pushing his thick glasses farther up his nose as he tilted his head to get a better look. “I mean, this took _talent_.”

“Ha-fucking-ha,” Bucky said. “Would you stick your spidery little hands up in here and try to _do_ something?”

“And get myself caught?” Steve asked. “I’m on vacation. I’m supposed to be relaxing, taking in the sea air, not getting caught in vending machines and freezing my ass off at—”

He pulled his smartphone out to check the time. “—4:57 in the morning.”

“This is California, you punk. It’s seventy degrees right now.”

“Still might go back to bed.”

“Rogers, help me out here,” Bucky pleaded. “This is my only left arm. What if it gets caught worse and they have to chop it off? What if it fuses with the machine? You want me to have a robot arm?”

Steve shook his head but relented. He set his phone aside and rolled up the sleeves of his oversized pajama shirt. “No one in their right mind would ever give you a robot arm, Buck. Alright, try wiggling to the left. I think I can lift the—”

“—yeah, I can feel the, the… the flap thingy? God, why did they have to make it so there’s one that lifts when you open the slot?”

“So jerks like you couldn’t try to get free snacks. Just hold it there, I think if— shit!”

Steve jerked as the other flap closed on his arm and jammed it against Bucky’s. His phone went skittering away across the pavement. Bucky started cursing like Steve hadn’t heard since he worked that shitty warehouse job.

“_Fucking_— Can you move?” Bucky asked. Steve slumped against him.

“Nope.”

“Can you stretch your leg out and get the phone?”

Steve buried his face in Bucky’s chest while his narrow shoulders shook with smothered laughter. “Nope.”

“We’re gonna die here,” Bucky repeated, curling his free arm around Steve and staring balefully up at the overcast night sky. “But at least we’ll die together.”

Steve lost it.

A little over an hour later Bucky peeked his eyes open at the sound of cheap flip-flops approaching across the cement. Peggy walked towards them in her navy blue one piece swimsuit, a beach towel over her arm, her phone in hand.

“I received the most hilarious Snapchat when I woke up this morning,” she said. “But now I think I’ve found something to top it. Hold that pose, my dears?”

“I’ve got no choice,” Bucky grumbled. “He honest-to-God fell back asleep on top of me.”

“I can’t take you two anywhere,” Peggy said, smiling, as she took a picture. Then she let the towel slip from her other arm to reveal a set of fine tools in her hand. When Bucky raised an eyebrow she explained, “Didn’t want to alarm the hotel staff. Now, let’s see what I can do about freeing you two before I squeeze in a morning swim.”

She gestured for Bucky to scoot aside and give her some room, so he wiggled away as far as he could with both his and Steve’s arms still trapped. She knelt in front of the machine and started doing something to the lock. After a moment there was a quiet pop and the front face of machine swung open an inch. Jarred, Steve blinked his eyes open and looked up.

“Oh, it’s Peggy,” he said, groggy but cheerful. “Are you here to save our lives?”

“As ever,” she said. “Now hold still.”

With her working from the other side of the machine and giving precise instructions, Bucky’s arm came free, and Steve’s followed right behind. Bucky slammed the thing closed with a little more force than was strictly necessary as she looked over the bruises blooming on both their arms.

“Do you two know how to take a holiday without getting into some kind of trouble?” she asked. When Steve opened his mouth to speak she cut him off. “No, don’t say that you do, I saw you Googling local protests when you got bored yesterday afternoon.”

Bucky didn’t say anything. He just looked down at the crushed and obviously melted candy bar in his hand.

“Is that a Milky Way?” Peggy asked, nose wrinkling.

“Don’t start in about our inferior American candy,” Bucky said. “Let me mourn.”

“I wouldn’t dare,” Peggy said, solemnly. She reached over and handed something to Steve. “I believe this is yours?”

He took back his phone gratefully and unlocked it. Steve took one look at his notifications and raised his eyebrows at Peggy. He opened Snapchat.

“Oh, that’s a great shot of my ass,” he said, and took a screenshot. “That’s going in the scrapbook.”

“And, in answer to your question, no, we don’t,” Bucky said, getting up and rolling his shoulder. “The last time we took a vacation it was a long weekend, we stayed home, and Steve still set something on fire.”

“Learned a valuable lesson about microwaving takeout that comes in those foil-paper wrappers, though,” Steve added.

“I suppose I’ll just have to prepare for every possible situation next time, although I thought I had,” Peggy said as she stood and tucked her tools under her towel again. “I didn’t take into account ‘your lovers are held hostage by a vending machine at a budget hotel,’ which speaks more to my lack of imagination than anything else.”

“You still going for a swim?” Bucky asked, cracking his neck. “I need to loosen up after spending two hours on the pavement _and_ being trapped beneath the bag of sharpened elbows that calls himself our boyfriend.”

“I am. I wanted to get in before everyone else woke up.” Peggy gave them both a conspiratorial look. “You know, these tools work just as well for jamming locks as opening them. Want to make another memory for the figurative scrapbook?”

“Uh-uh,” Steve said. “If I’m skinny-dipping, it’s going to be in the actual ocean.”

“For what, artistic purity?” Bucky asked with a snort. “It’s the Pacific Ocean, pal. You’ll drop dead.”

“Come along, Steven,” Peggy said, offering him a hand up. “You owe your savior. And, before we get in, Bucky?”

“Yeah?”

“Put your horrifying liquefied candy bar in the minifridge. By the time we sneak back it’ll be edible again.”


	4. love in the time of sugar rationing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> canon compliant, Steve/Bucky/Peggy, Important OTP question: which one/s tries and fails to make a rum cake and winds up drunk and covered in flour, and which one/s come home to find them in this condition?

It was so quiet on the landing outside the little apartment he had for the week that Steve pulled his handgun from his hip holster before he tried the door. Unlocked. Steve cocked the gun as he stepped inside.  
  
“Bucky?” he hissed. “You in here?”  
  
No response. But there was a throaty humming coming from the kitchenette just to his left around the wall. He sucked in a breath and turned the corner fast. His gun was up and aimed almost before he registered that there wasn’t a Hydra agent crouched behind the sagging counter, humming an off-key rendition of “Daddy” by Sammy Kaye, just Bucky Barnes and–because his life hadn’t made much sense since the whole Captain America thing started–Agent Peggy Carter sprawled on his kitchen floor.

Bucky stopped humming when he saw the gun, but grinned as Steve holstered it and spat a “Jesus, Buck!” at the wall.

“Eh-hey, if it isn’t just the man we were waitin’ for!” he crowed, far too loud for just after three-in-the-morning London time. “Steve! Steven! Ste–”

“Are you drunk?” Steve asked, incredulous. “I’m asking because I hope I’ll blink, you’ll be upright, and the answer won’t obviously be ‘yes.’”

“Look,” Bucky started, “there were egs– extenuatin’– Hey, Peggy. Pegs. Peggy. Wake up, Steve’s here.”

He gave the woman laying on him a few shoves but she didn’t do much more than groan.

“Come on, doll, my whole lower body’s goin’ numb, at this rate it’ll be useless–”  
  
“How is that any different from normal?” Peggy slurred into his shirt. Steve pressed his face into his hands and tried to keep from laughing.

“You hearin’ that?” Bucky asked, though whether he was asking Steve or the saucepan balanced precariously on the counter above Steve he couldn’t tell. His eyes were fixed and he blinked slowly. “Your girl’s takin’ me apart here.”

“Our girl,” Steve corrected, absently. He took another deep breath. He went back, shut the door, and locked it. Then he came and took a seat on the floor next to them.

“How’d this happen?” he asked. “All the Commandos promised to lay off and keep sharp this week because of what happened in–”

“Yeah, yeah,” Bucky agreed, waving him off with a heavy hand. “I know. That’s why. We was tryin’ to do somethin’ nice, is all.”

Steve cocked an eyebrow. “’Something nice’?”

“We are making a rum cake,” Peggy said, enunciating slowly, as she rolled over. The movement made Bucky grumble and revealed a near-empty brown bottle clutched to her rumpled blouse.

“I don’t think you’re making it anymore,” Steve observed, smiling in spite of himself.

“We _were_ making a rum cake,” Peggy corrected. She huffed out a breath that ruffled her drooping curls and added, “I… received a package from a contact of mine in… oh, damn. W_here_?”

“Place they make rum,” Bucky offered. He looked at Steve and shrugged. “Rum places, I dunno. Got her a bottle.”

“So you two decided to make a cake?”

“You can’t get drunk,” Peggy pointed out. “How else were we to share it for equal enjoyment?”

Steve dragged his knees up and propped his chin on a hand, looking over his would-be bakers, thankful they weren’t wearing any rationed ingredients.

“You did a great job with that,” he said. Bucky groaned and scrubbed a hand over his eyes.

“Told you we shoulda just said ‘to hell with it’ and _tried_,” he said to Peggy. He pitched his voice a little higher and started in with a bad British accent as he added, “_No_, Sergeant Barnes, we musn’t _rush in_ and misuse ingredients. Sergeant Barnes, look over the recipe once more before you_ touch_ that pan. Sergeant Barnes–”

Peggy shifted and he shut up. He had obviously forgotten what valuable parts she was sitting on, and Steve couldn’t see one of her hands. He gave up on trying not to laugh as Bucky’s face slowly drained of color.

“Who was it, _Sergeant Barnes_,” she asked, “who suggested we take a sip every few minutes to steady our hands to pour?”

“Me, that was me, I deeply apologize,” Bucky said, voice strained.

“Spare the parts we love him for,” Steve said.

Peggy’s other hand came up to join the one on the bottle and Bucky sucked in a shuddering breath. Then he started laughing.

“Both of you,” he wheezed. “_A__wful. _What’d I get myself into?”

Peggy held the bottle out to Steve and, to her credit, really did look torn up about it. “Last sip?”

“Save it,” Steve said as he stood. He looked over the counter. “You get a hold of everything else for the cake?”

“You still wanna make it?” Bucky asked, looking up at him in disbelief. “Won’t be half as good without the rum in it.”

“Maybe _your_ piece won’t be,” Steve said. “According to Peggy I’ve got a whole sip to work with.”

Peggy and Steve took one look at Bucky’s affronted expression and burst into fresh laughter.


	5. the screaming deathspiral

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> teenage, modern, non-powered au. SteveBuckyPeggy “I get really sick on roller-coasters and you had the misfortune of sitting in front of me so, uh… sorry…” AU

“Bucky, let me puke into your coat,” Steve said, in a shitty attempt at a stage whisper.

“What?” Bucky asked, at normal volume, because _what?_

Steve shushed him. He shot a look at the people boarding the ride down the line. He seemed to be gauging how long he had before the metal safety guards came down and trapped him in the car next to Bucky on _The Screaming Deathspiral_. 

“You made me get in this thing,” Steve started, “and you _know_ I always throw up, and there is a _beautiful_ girl seated _right in front of us_, so if you meant anything you said that summer when we _cut our hands open_ and swore a _blood oath_ to be together for life, then–”

“I got it, I got it!” Bucky hissed, lowering his voice as he checked out the back of the girl’s head in front of them. “Christ, it was a half inch cut with a pocket knife, not a Satanic ritual. But my coat, man? My coat? I just got this.”

“Then it don’t have any sentimental value. Hand it over.”

“How’re you gonna hold a coat up to your face when this damn thing gets going a hundred miles per fuckin’ hour?” Bucky asked, getting heated. “It’s gonna go right out of your hands into the sky, ain’t it? And even if it doesn’t, you gonna put the moves on her after your lunch’s blown back into your whole face?”

“What am I supposed to do, just let it happen?” Steve whispered. “I thought that time you threw up on my shoes was the worst thing that ever happened to me. Buck, if I blow chunks on her I’ll _die.”_

Bucky buried his face in his hands. “Listen, Rogers,_ logistically–_”

“We ain’t got enough time for you to be talking _logistics_!”

“Clench your fuckin’ teeth together and pray like the rest of us!”

“_When _has that _ever _worked for me?”

“How about this?” the girl said, turning around and pinning them with a look. “We jump out now, wave off security, and I’ll get funnel cake with the both of you.”

“The both of us?” Bucky repeated, stunned.

“From what I’ve heard you’re equally ridiculous,” she said. “I might as well have the set. And I thought I heard something about a blood oath?”

Steve gave him a look like this was the most important thing either of them would ever do in their entire lives. He grabbed Bucky’s hand.

“I’m down,” he said.

“I thought–” Bucky started, giving Steve a confused but slightly hopeful look. “You never–”

The metal guards behind them creaked in preparation to drop.

“We’ll sort out whether there’s really a ‘b’ in your ‘bromance’ later!” Peggy shouted. “Move!”

They moved.


	6. cake by committee

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Barbershop Quartet (Steve/Bucky/Natasha/Sam), “alright who ate the last piece of chocolate cake i thought we ALL agreed to share it?!”

“Oh, Steve’s gonna be pissed,” Sam said, pointing at the empty cake stand with his fork as Natasha diced an onion. “When did that disappear?”

“You’re asking me?”

“I know you just got in, but, since you’re all-knowing—”

Natasha flicked a piece of onion at him. “I don’t know where you boys keep getting that idea. And no, I don’t know when it disappeared. But you’re right. Steve was looking forward to us dreamily staring into each other’s eyes as we quartered that last piece.”

“It would’ve been a fork fight and he knows it,” Bucky said. He manned the stove, melting butter in a cast iron pan with his left hand because they were out of clean potholders. “You see him today, Sam? You were both outta bed when I got around.”

“He was up before me,” Sam said, returning to whisking the eggs and milk for their omelets. “I ran on my own. Figured somebody called him in on high-level Avengers business.”

“Uh-uh,” Natasha said as she scraped the onion into a bowl for Bucky and then moved on to a green pepper. “I was just at the Tower before I came here. Things are so slow Maria’s making mimosas.”

It was just after seven o’clock in the morning. The light slanting in the windows of Sam’s house hadn’t quite lost the gray tinge of dawn yet.

“Huh,” Sam said, staring at the cake stand.

“You’re thinking it, not me,” Bucky said.

“He ate the cake?” Natasha asked, raising an eyebrow. “Captain Equity?”

“Captain Munchies,” Sam corrected. “We still got strawberries? That’s his first stop, usually.”

Natasha leaned over and popped the refrigerator door open. One glance and she was smiling. “No, we do not.”

“Little bastard,” Bucky groused. “That was the best ‘Congrats on Six Months of Whatever the Hell it is You Four Are Doing’ cake I’ve ever had.”

“You get many of those?” Sam teased. He dodged Bucky’s swat at his ass with a laugh. “And yeah, it was – if only for the fact all that, in icing, fit on the cake.”

“Tony keeps a designated occasion and apology cake decorator on call,” Natasha said. “Amira’s very good.”

She moved on to chopping ham, Sam handed over the finished eggs, and Bucky began cooking their usual omelets. Sam couldn’t help looking over at the empty cake stand again.

“You think he realized it was special-ordered?” he asked. Bucky laughed.

“Do you think that’s gonna stop him?”

Sam grinned as he turned on the coffee maker. “Alright, let me put this together. Sometime late last night—”

“—or early this morning,” Natasha suggested. “Depending on whether it was something he read before bed or something he dreamed of that gave him the craving.”

“—or early this morning,” Sam allowed, “Steve ate everything sweet he could find in this house, including the cake we all swore not to touch until we could get together and finish it off. Then the guilt got too much for him and he took off—”

“—and is probably right now, as we speak, running all over hell and half of D.C. looking for a replacement for the special-ordered cake Stark had a drone fly us from New York?” Bucky finished for him. He swung the frying pan and caught the contents again with a flick of his wrist. “Yeah. That sounds about right.”

“We’re dating a clown,” Sam said. “This is amazing. I’d get it if it were just me, y’know, I’ve dated a bunch of clowns. But all three of us?”

“He got to me early,” Bucky said as he scraped the first omelet onto a plate. “I wasn’t ever gonna be help warning you off him.”

“And I’m just having too good of a time,” Natasha said. “Bet you money we don’t see him for the next three days as he works a grid of the D.C.-metro area trying every chocolate cake looking for _the one_.”

“Nah,” Sam said. “He’s probably been taken in by somebody’s grandmother and is helping bake some next-level, straight-from-the-Old-Country cake from scratch for us.”

“You’re both wrong,” Bucky said as he poured the next omelet. “He’ll come home in two hours with the best cake he could find, _the one _or not, and make up the difference by giving us all head.”

“Just like old times?” Natasha teased as she handed off the last of the ingredients.

“Oh, yeah. Back during the war if rations were shit it was just blowjobs all around,” Bucky said, blasé as he flipped the omelet. “Sorry, fellas. What’re you gonna do?”

“Of all the traditions to die out before I got in,” Sam grumbled.

They all stopped what they were doing and looked at the door as a key hit the lock.

“How much were we betting?” Bucky asked. “Because I think I hear a cheap plastic grocery bag.”

“The usual,” Natasha said. “But don’t count me out yet. You know how fast he can canvas an area.”

“You’re both underestimating how many old women his lost puppy look attracts,” Sam said. As he spoke the door opened a crack. “Here we go.”

Steve stepped into the house and knocked dirty slush off his boots without looking up, a round container in a wrinkled Safeway bag under one arm, the other steadying him as he tried to keep the bulk of the slush outside. When he did look up, he saw all three of his lovers staring at him over the breakfast bar separating the living area from the kitchen.

“Um,” he said. “Morning?”

“We know your crime, Steven,” Natasha said, in her most solemn tone. Sam crossed his arms over his chest and raised his eyebrows at Steve. Bucky just shook his head gravely.

Steve sagged as he closed and locked the door. “Look, I’m sorry. I couldn’t sleep so I streamed _Fried Green Tomatoes_, and then there was that scene with the—”

“What’s in the bag?” Sam asked. Steve toed his shoes off and brought it over to set down on the counter.

“I thought I would just get some more cake,” Steve started, “but after I hit about fourteen different bakeries I remembered that Tony bought the one we had, so it probably wasn’t local. Despite the whole Ultron thing, the man still loves his drones.”

Natasha shot Bucky and Sam a vindicated look while Steve’s head was ducked over the bag. Bucky kept flipping omelets but Sam mouthed, “We’re not down yet.”

“Then, it’s the funniest thing, I was walking home and this woman stopped me and asked what was wrong.” Steve laughed. “Guess I was wearing the morning on my face.”

Sam made the same ridiculous overjoyed/mind-blown expression he made last Halloween, when the first Falcon trick-or-treater showed up at their door. Natasha rolled her eyes at him and hit the button to turn off the coffee machine. Bucky kept cranking out omelets, saying nothing.

“…anyway, she gave me a recipe for a chocolate cake her mother used to make,” Steve said as he pushed down the grocery bag covering the round container, “so I figured we could try it out, if you’re up for it.”

The round container was, in fact, a brand new cake pan, and inside it were the few things they didn’t already have in their well-stocked pantry for the recipe, scribbled on a half sheet of paper resting on top. Steve was looking at them expectantly, so Sam couldn’t try to communicate with the others as to how this development affected the bet. Not that Bucky was paying him much attention. He plated the last omelet, knocked the spatula against the side of the frying pan, and asked, “And what if it doesn’t turn out?”

Steve valiantly only turned a little pink as he said, “Well. I think I could make it up to you all _somehow_.”

“Holy shit,” Sam said, slapping the countertop. “Holy shit. Only you, Steve Rogers.”

“What?”

“Three for three,” Natasha said. “No winners, no losers.”

“Oh, we’re all still winners,” Bucky said. To Steve’s confused look, he passed a plate over and added, “Get some real food in you, sugar fiend. Then we’ll try to bake a cake by committee.”

**Author's Note:**

> i'm not much into marvel anymore but if you want some decent shitposting and memes about being gay and hating capitalism you can catch me on tumblr [@she-hulk](http://she-hulk.tumblr.com). if you actually want to read more of my work, check out an archive of stories i've written about RPG characters you don't know at [my wordpress site](http://alexstoryvault.wordpress.com).


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